Mage Towers: The Making of a Warlock
by Glitch in the System
Summary: A demon lord has found a new realm ripe for the taking. That realm happens to ours. D&D and modern technology collide in a siege of a world ignorant of magic.
1. Give me an Insight Check

It was the dead of night and Olivia was on the street again. It wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last. She was sure of it. She was a teenager that had never really had a home to call her own, despite CPS's best efforts. She didn't really mind it, she thought as she waited for her sketchy contact to meet her in the shadowy part outside of the trailer park in Franklinton.

She looked down the road again and stuffed in her pockets. Her contact was late, as usual. She had a knife on her always, because she liked the night. She did NOT like what the night could bring to a wandering seventeen year old. She gripped the handle in her pouch pocket at the sound of footsteps.

"Livvy," a voice hissed.

She relaxed her grip and sighed in relief.

Tonight's contact, named Shawn, was about twenty-one. An addict, but not exactly a rapist or a killer. Even though it was about forty degrees out he was still wearing a mesh tank top and skinny jeans. She had always hesitated to ask what he did all night where he could dress like that and not get scolded at by old church ladies or laughed at by gruff middle aged men looking for any chance to blame a millenial.

"Hey," she said. "You got anything?"

Shawn was often looking for people to run "errands" for him. These errands were always kept in black plastic bags that should have been used to pick up dog poop. She was pretty sure it wasn't actually dog poop given the light in people's eyes when she delivered the goods.

"Yeah," Shawn said.

He sniffed and wiped his nose with his hand. Olivia wanted to grimace, but it wouldn't do any good to offend Shawn before money changed hands. So she grit her teeth and held out her hand. He started to put the bag in hand when she pulled back at the last minute..

"One hundred dollars," she said.

Shawn's smile fell.

"What?"

Olivia wiggled her fingers.

"One hundred."

He scowled.

"I paid you fifty last time."

"This is different. That bag looks…" She looked at it, ready to make some half-assed excuse about why she should be paid extra, and suddenly the bag actually did look off. Nothing was piled within, weighted at the bottom. She had been ready to start swindling the man and pretend like it was something she wouldn't do. She recognized that it was blocky and shaped like an "L" through the plastic.

Apparently it actually was something she wasn't willing to hold.

Olivia snatched her hand back. "What the hell, Shawn!" Shawn winced at her suddenly tone. He put a finger to his lip and shushed her loudly, making spittle as he did. Olivia made a face and raised her hands up, indicating their surroundings. "We're on a dark country road. Who are we keeping our voices down for?"

Shawn sucked in air through his nose and exhaled wearily.

"I came to you for this because I thought I could get a good price from you," he said. Olivia's lips twitched at the admission, but otherwise gave no reaction.

"So you're saying I should be charging more?"

"No no no no," Shawn went on. He reached behind one of his piercing riddled ears and scratched hard. "What I'm saying is I thought we were friends. I didn't think you'd pull something like this. That's immature. _You're_ immature." Olivia waited for the tirade to stop. Chemically unhinged guys needed to let steam off pretty often. It was better just to wait it out until they, hopefully, began to see just how unreasonable they were being.

She put her hands in her pocket when he started forward to hand off the bag..

"Is that going to kill someone?" she asked, dipping a chin at the suspected gun. Again he gave her that incredulous look. As if Olivia were trying to pay for something with an expired coupon. When she remained unmoved Shawn straightened and shifted his stance.

"I'll pay one-fifty."

She shook her head.

"Five hundred."

It was a risk asking for five times what she normally did this for. Then again she was also half hoping he would decline and let her go home without something like a gun that was likely stolen so that the weapon couldn't be linked to the killer in anyway.

Shawn shook his head..

"That's my entire take."

Olivia swallowed hard, her eyes darting between Shawn and the gun. She fidgeted with her fingers in her hoodie pocket. Judging from Shawn's sudden stillness she guessed that he was rigid, hoping that she should leave the price alone.

He could pay her price, she guessed. He just didn't want to. She could walk away now. Maybe she should. Then again… the money. She made an impulsive then. If she could convince Shawn to take this price she would do it. If he didn't then maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Olivia straightened, resolved with this new low.

God, she really hoped it wasn't meant to be.

"Not my problem. You need to negotiate your prices better. Five hundred. Take it or leave it," Olivia insisted.

Shawn was just plain pissed now.

Olivia's gut twisted with a new anxiety.

Maybe she was pushing her luck. She was alone out here, with nothing but a dagger. She had never had to actually attack anyone with her blade and she'd certainly never wanted to kill one of her very few contacts. Franklinton was a new town for her and her college stash and post foster home life was already looking bleak. She just didn't have the kind of dedication it took to get good grades or join a sports team for a scholarship. She didn't know when she was going to hear back about the state grants she's applied for. She had to secure her future by any means necessary, including being a drug runner.

Or a gun runner, she supposed.

But five hundred dollars would get her up to a solid ten thousand. She would love to add an extra digit to her savings. Or, as it was, the stash that was in a shoebox under her bed.

Shawn bit his lip.

Then her gut told her that Shawn was lying about the meager take he'd agreed to. She smothered a smile of relief when Shawn's shoulders sagged in defeat.

" _Fine_ ," he said stretching out he "F" as if he was tempted to use a different word with four letters. Muttering he stabbed his hand in the back pocket of his pants and revealed a pretty impressive wad of cash.

Olivia smiled and held her hand out patiently while he counted out hundreds and twenties.

"This is bad business. I'll remember this," Shawn grumbled.

"Back at you, buddy. I hope you don't have your fingerprints on this suspiciously shaped item that I'm delivering." Shawn offered the probable gun and she pulled her sleeve over her hand to accept the item. Shawn turned around and headed back to the mobile home park without so much as a goodbye. Olivia didn't really need one so she turned the other direction to

In the other was five hundred dollars.

Back this way there wasn't anyone on the road this time of night. It was quiet. The fog was heavy and the sounds of frogs croaking was soothing. Maybe Olivia would make her home here or somewhere like it. The country was much more peaceful than the city.

It was on that thought that the ground shook.

Olivia stopped cold as the tall trees on either side of the road swayed gently in the reaction. Then came a warm breeze, like air rolling out of a hot oven. She turned toward direction of inexplicable energy, mind suddenly churning with thoughts of nuclear bombs and fallout. There was nothing else. Not for a long moment.

Then an explosion from the mobile homes.

A meth lab explosion.

Olivia sighed, suddenly feeling silly for thinking it was a nuclear blast. Then guilt for knowing that she was probably indirectly involved with the idiots that blew their home and endangered their neighbors in the far off mobile home park. Her cheeks burned at that, but also that wind of heat was enough to sway the trees all the way down the road. Could a reaction like that come from a chemical explosion that far away?

It was the gun in her pocket making her paranoid. She needed to get home soon and wait for Shawn to text her the address of the delivery.

Olivia turned, doubling her speed as she walked down the highway and into town before someone could catch her out after curfew. That was another thing about the night. It was bound to bring strange things that would be better off unexplained.


	2. Roll for Perception

Olivia wedged her fingers underneath the bedroom window and caught the pane on the heel of her hand. Sneaking back into the house was far more difficult than getting out. With enough jimmying the window squeaked up the frame inch by inch. Finally she managed to get an arm in, then the rest of her body, ungraceful as it may be.

The Carter family, Olivia's current foster family, hadn't done a lot of updating to the home which was why the windows were practically rusted shut. Still they were certainly nice people and they kept the home tidy, though they had made it abundantly clear they expected the same for her. That wasn't too difficult when one didn't have many permanent possessions to start out with. She was still new to this family, but they had yet to notice that she only had three outfits that she kept wearing and washing multiple times a week.

 _Those days will be gone_ , Olivia told herself.

A regular person might have put her new possible weapon in a hiding place first, but frankly Olivia needed the reminder of the money she'd made tonight first. She removed the wad of cash and crossed the room, falling to her knees to drag the shoebox out from beneath her bed. Tampons exploded from within, deterrent to keep her money safe from nosey foster families, and she let them loose so that she could remove the false cardboard bottom and lay the money down with her other crinkled bills.

"There," she breathed and smiled at the pile of mismatched bills.

Ten thousand dollars.

She was going to be ready when she turned eighteen. She would not be a foster kid statistic. This criminal life she'd been living the past four years was going to be a distant memory one day. Maybe when no one was home she would allow herself the luxury of counting her money and look up apartment rentals in New Orleans on her phone.

A strange sound caught her attention.

She frowned at the door, at the low humming sound seemed to resonate. It sounded like something vibrating in the next room. Was it a cell phone?

The sound died down and then instead she could hear sloppy, crunching sounds.

Every hair on her neck stood at attention. She didn't move, even as curiosity goaded her to see what it was before she did anything rash. Olivia had seen enough of life to know that ignoring an initial instinct could result in disaster.

She split the difference by opening that box of tampons again and dumping them to get to the false bottom of the shoebox. The tampon wrappers rustled gently to the carpet, the thin plastic crackling was quiet. When the sounds from the living room stopped suddenly. She stilled. Someone had heard

Crap.

Olivia snatched all the money in her pocket messily between her fingers and shoved in unceremoniously into her back pocket. Pockets. She hadn't gotten to finding a place to hide the gun just yet, had she?

Her stomach dropped. Should she hold on to it? Was she being paranoid? Should she put it away now before either foster parent found her armed with a gun AND the dagger they still didn't know she carried around?

Her hesitation was interrupted by a horrible sound that nearly brought her to her knees at once. Her skull vibrated like someone had just turned on a subwoofer in her brain. The droning was a low, angry sound like a swarm of bees or the hum of a machine pushed to its limit and about to break apart.

She slapped her hands over her ears and stumbled to her feet. The backs of her knees hit the bed, almost forcing her to sit on the edge. She caught herself and looked up. Her eyes went wide. Peeking in her bedroom door was a head. Not a human head, but a blown up insect's head with an exoskeleton shining in the moonlight.

The sound's volume raised. She could feel her the vibration of its resonating pitch rattling the bedpost.

 _Move. Now_ , commanded her gut instincts.

She regained enough composure to scramble over the bed for the window she'd (thank god) hadn't closed behind her just yet. She dove outside head first, accepting the hard fall into the dying rosebush without a scrambled, scratched to her feet to run for the street, the quiet neighborhood that was just outside of Franklinton's meager downtown area.

As she did she saw other things, shadows moving under the trees in the planters along the sidewalk. Someone screamed and the sirens blared to life in the distance.

What was going on?

She tensed at the sound of glass shattering behind her. She whirled around just in time to see the hellish wasp thing stick one spindly leg through the window and then another picking apart the surrounding stucco and window sill. The drone sound exploded out again and she just barely resisted the urge to cover her ears.

Now, with nothing obstructing the moonlight and the dim lights of the street lamps, she could see the dark patches of blood around its maw. The legs left bloody tracks on the white exterior paint.

It had been eating something. Not something. Some _one_ in her house.

The Carter's were good people. They were arguably the nicest family she'd ever lived with. Had it gotten the young seven year old? Mrs. Carter?

The drone sound stopped just long enough to let out a frustrated screech when the monster couldn't get its engorged body through the window. A still target.

 _If there was ever a time to learn to use a weapon..._

She plucked the doggie bag from her hoodie's pocket and ripped through the plastic. Confirmed, it was indeed a gun. She wielded it in hand, suddenly hoping that the safety was off and firing really was as simple as aiming and squeezing the trigger.

"Fuck off ugly mother fucker!"

BANG! A hole appeared in the stucco of the house and the gun jumped at the kickback. She gripped the gun harder, arms straighter. BANG! BANG! Another hole in the side out the house on the first shot and the screaming monster threw its head back on the second, splatter appearing on the exterior of the house behind it.

The creature looked down again, missing a corner of its own skull and somehow it seemed little more than mildly inconvenienced. Enraged,the monster's strength was renewed. Hair covered stick-like legs pushed at the exit it was making for itself. The framing around the window crumbled and stucco started to shatter.

It was going to get through.

"Crap," she swore between ragged breaths and turned the run toward the street. She stopped suddenly when a van tore down the asphalt a highway speeds, nearly clipping her the second she stepped foot off the curb.

She skid to a halt just in time, only just catching a glimpse of the driver swatting at something fluttering around his head like a bat and trying to steer at the same time. It scraped a parked truck, spun and landed on its side in an explosion of broken glass and screeching metal.

Panic seized her, urging her through hesitation.

 _Other way! Move!_

She did a one-eighty, reacquainted with the sight of the monster hoisting itself through her bedroom window. Her eyes went straight past it it, her mind landing on an idea. Behind the house was a bit of wood that ventured out beyond the property line where she knew Mr. Carter had built a deer stand.

When Olivia had first arrived she learned about it from another one of their foster kids. Mr. Carter was still looking for one of the kids to be interested in hunting so that they could use it. Olivia had briefly considered it, thinking maybe if she showed some interest she could get to know Mr. Carter well enough for him to take pity on her, maybe help her with college. But being cozy with adult men as a teenage girl could be a dicey thing and she'd decided not to risk it.

Olivia was regretting that now. At the very least he probably could have showed her how to aim a gun properly.

Olivia watched the canopy, looking for the structure in the branches. She found it, an unnatural lump of two by fours nailed together and blocking out the full moon's light. She skidded to the base of the tree where Mr. Carter had left a large metal chest, not unlike ones that were probably used by the military. She knelt down, surprised when she opened it and saw what could only be described a crap load of empty Jack Daniels bottles.

She jerked back, startled by the smell of stale whiskey rolling out of the chest.

"Holy… hell…"

Olivia swore again and looked back the way she came. She saw nothing coming after her, not that this meant anything. She could barely even make out anything between the silhouettes of the trees.

Still shaking, she doubled over with her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. She'd been hoping there was something like a rifle or some other kind of useful hunting gear in the huge chest. Apparently all she found was that Mr. Carter had been a closet drunk.

She looked up at the deer stand. Panicked as she was she didn't think about calling 911. How would she explain that there was a monster in her room? Not to mention there was a sensation in the air that she couldn't explain. Like nowhere was safe.

She paused at the sound of pounding footsteps.

Then she reached down and started to grab bottles one by one.

She tossed one bottle aside and another and another, pausing only when she heard an anonymous roar from town and then doubling her efforts. Crap, crap, crap. Aha! All clear. She pulled herself into the army chest thing, took the gun and then laid down to wait out the night.

Almost immediately upon feeling safe she felt a rush of embarrassment. What had she really seen tonight? Why hadn't she run back and searched for help? Or car keys? She'd only driven a handful of times, but she was certain she could figure it out if she had to.

She pulled up her phone, grimacing. Getting a signal was almost impossible in towns like Franklinton, but in the short time she'd connected to the wifi when she'd gotten home she had gotten a string of text messages:

 **Where are you?**

 **Something is wrong. We're calling the police.**

 **Can't contact the police. They're stuck downstairs. Something is trying to get in the house**

 **Where are you? Answer now. You're voicemail is full.**

 **I'm so sorry. We had to leave. Don't come home.**

Olivia frowned.

Maybe she wasn't being paranoid.

Hours passed where all the awful noises were muffled. Somewhere in the distance there was another explosion and what sounded like rapid gun fire, spitting out bullets and then stopping suddenly. Footsteps ran past her hiding place and she held the gun to her chest, ready to shoot up at anything that might open the lid to her hiding place.

She laid there for a long time, the cold of night waning to morning sunlight. She was breathing stale, whiskey laden air, but she didn't dare do more than crack the lid for a few moments at time, hoping that she wouldn't hear or see anything from the random surge of monsters that seemed to have suddenly invaded the world overnight.

Maybe when she woke up she would find this to be a horrible scenario. She would open the lid only to find her city was exactly the way it should be and she'd spent the night a homemade, oversized gun chest holding in the urge to pee for no other reason than that she had had a minor, and hopefully temporary, psychotic break.


	3. By the Grace of the DM

Olivia woke with a start and choking on stale air. She felt around in the dark, bumping around and felt the gun that had fallen to the side. As she didn't even know how to work the safety on the weapon, she knew it was off

Great. She could have survived the monster wasp just only to die by sleeping with her gun and bumping the trigger the wrong way.

She gradually cracked open the lid of her hiding place. She sucked in a breath of fresh air and almost immediately smelled the tint of smoke. And so went any hope that last night had been a horrible nightmare.

Olivia gripped the gun with her free hand, trying to get her aching body to sit upright after being cramped in a gun chest overnight. Mid-morning sunlight pierced her adjusting eyes, coloring the usual morning fog to an odd purplish color. The world looked unchanged, but it smelled and felt different. There was an energy, a magnetism that she couldn't place.

A _wrongness._

There would be no waiting whatever problem was out there. Olivia's eyes darted toward the sound of branch snapping and the following sounds of footsteps crunching over dead leaves somewhere in the plume of fog. Something was coming.

Eyes wide, she popped right back into the trunk. The lid slammed far too loudly and she mentally swore at herself.

"What was that?" a guttural voice asked.

She paused. Voices? These weren't monsters. These were people. She hesitated, hand on the lid of the gun chest when something stopped her from showing where she was. She just couldn't shake the instinct that she wasn't safe.

"Don't know," responded another. "Come on. This way."

Olivia pressed her lips tight, forcing every breath in and out her nose to be as quiet as possible. Still it echoed in the confined space.

"What is this? A chest of some kind?"

"Loot!" cheered another voice. Olivia frowned. Their voices were also tinged with the slightest accent, lacking the drawl of any Louisianan she'd ever met.

She slowly pulled her hand from the lid, confirmed that she was right not to show herself. Instead she rested her finger on the trigger and mentally berated herself for not knowing how many bullets she had left.

"Go on. Open it up and see what's inside," said the second voice.

Olivia swallowed hard, ready to fire at anyone that dared to check out her hiding spot. She licked her lips, focused on keeping herself as still and silent as possible. For a long moment nothing seemed to happen, she exhaled and blinked in confusion.

"No way. You've got the armor. You open the chest," said the first voice.

"Absolutely not. You know as well as I do that this could be a mimic."

"It might not be. Do you want the loot or not?"

"There are nothing but empty liquor bottles strewn about. Could there really be anything of value in there?"

Olivia's brows rose. Really? They weren't going to open a mysterious chest they ran across? What exactly were they afraid of? A trap? A bomb? Olivia steadied, praying on for whatever miracle might be playing out here.

"Perhaps... I mean, worst case scenario it's only a single mimic. There's two of us. We could take this. Come on. Get ready. Arm yourself."

More hesitation. Olivia waited once and again.

"Ready…. One… Two… Wait, wait. Who's going to initiate this? You or me?"

More silence.

"You know what? We don't have to initiate this at all."

"That's right, and why should we? Best case scenario some drunk left this here. What inside it could possibly be of any value? We have loads of residences and corpses to loot in the town."

"Yes! Some stupid creature will run into this sooner or later. Let one of them get the ambush. We're almost off patrol duty anyway."

Olivia heard the muttering and footsteps fade away before she finally allowed herself to exhale. Her fear had kept her in this thing for far too long already. She was only going to get more questions than answers if she stayed.

She looked in the direction she'd heard the people walk. They were long gone now. Orange daylight streamed over the branches, but it was tinged by the smoke in the air.

What had happened to Franklinton overnight?

She hopped from foot to foot, eager for answers, but Olivia had never had to pee so badly in her life. She turned in a circle, looking for more patrol. She saw nothing in the immediately area. She remembered the deer stand and looked up.

Neither patrol had noticed had been so fixated on the box and the Jack Daniels bottles strewn around.

And the gun chest… had they called it… a mimic? What was that supposed to be? Whatever it was they had expected the trunk to hurt them in some way.

What a weird thing to worry about.

She couldn't think about it. Especially when she was doing the "gotta pee" dance in the middle of a monster infested forest. The nearest place was the Carter house, which was also occupied last she'd checked.

Where should she go? Somewhere behind a bush where god-knew-what could happen upon her doing her business out in the open? Or somewhere she was already going to go to look for any signs of her foster family?

Decided, Olivia ran home as fast as she could. There was no avoiding the foliage on the ground so she crunched noisily with every step, only spurring her faster. Soon she could make out the back of the house through the trees.

She screeched to a halt and gave herself just enough time to catch her breath. Everything was quiet and still from the back of the house, but there was an eeriness to the silence. Biting her lip, she checked her phone and saw that it had put itself in a power save mode, almost dead.

There was nothing left to do, but see what was inside.

Olivia walked through the backyard, past the rusted play set that had once been used for other foster kids. Her gun was hot and slippery with sweat in her hand. She readjusted her grip, stalling at the glass back door where things were already looking bleak.

There was a dead body there. She approached the glass door and recognized the plaid shirt and generic Nikes right away.

It was the half eaten corpse of Mr. Carter. His skin and clothes were torn. His arms were still outstretched, mouth open in the silent scream. She followed the arm, still perfectly intact, to see that he was reaching for a bat the in the corner of the room.

Olivia wanted to wretch, but her feet sent her skirting the room, careful not to avoid the sopping wet patch of blood on the carpet and went straight into the hallway for the one full bathroom in the house to relieve herself. She sat there on the toilet and heaved when the pungent smell reached her far too late.

She reached the small waste basket and pulled it into her lap so she could dry heave over and over.

"What the hell?" she asked no one in the small space. She wretched again, but instead tears streamed down her face, splattering the plastic lining of the waste basket. She rested there as long as she could breathe through her mouth.

Finally she stood up and flushed the toilet. She felt drained, emotionally and physically. She wished that she could stay here and take a shower, but there was for sure one corpse in the house. There could be more. She couldn't bear to find her young foster brother or the Carter's only biological child, a small six year old girl, somewhere torn the bits in their room.

Olivia went to the mirror and soaked a hand towel to wipe her face.

It was clearly time to move on. The question was where? Or more importantly how? There were apparently walking, talking adversaries in the town as well as monsters. They were patrolling. They were strange.

Something was more than wrong and she didn't have a single soul to contact in town for help.

Olivia sucked in a breath, put a hand on the doorknob and looked studiously away from the mess as she made her way to her own room.

She had one small blessing. She didn't have a lot of possessions she would have to leave behind. She removed her schoolwork and binders to make room for her plain black Jansport backpack.

"Where do you think you're going, Olivia?" she asked herself aloud as she rolled up her jeans and t-shirts. She stuffed other essentials in. All the hair ties she'd procured since moving in, toothbrush, toothpaste, a handful of tampons.

"Away from here," Olivia answered herself as she hoisted the backpack straps onto her shoulders and gazed around the room as she remembered that she wasn't sure what she was going to run into out there. She'd just spent the night in a glorified trunk. She was going to need more than what would be brought to stay overnight. She might need water, food, and some other supplies.

She snatched her phone charger before she could forget about it and stuffed it into her pocket where knuckles brushed up against the other item that was there.

The gun.

She held it in the light then, really looking at the pistol. Her panicked choice for a weapon. Possibly the only thing between her and any other monster that she ran across. She didn't really understand what she was holding at all, really.

At the very least it warranted a Google.

Options.

She needed them. And she couldn't think in a house with the rotting corpse of the that had taken her in. She plugged in her phone, content with just getting it up to a fifty percent charge, and saw a few emergency alerts.

Shelter-In-Place: Franklinton residents are encouraged to stay indoors and barricade the doors.

"Thanks for the heads up," she muttered to no one and then looked for the door. One thing was for certain. Something that couldn't be outright killed by a head wound and could tear away exterior walls, was not going to be stopped by a door. Barricaded or not.

Warnings be damned. She needed to get a car.


End file.
